45 Years

45 years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his eponymous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. “Unity is the great need of the hour”, Dr. King proclaimed; this statement is as true today as it was in 1963, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King’s most famous speech set a ripple out in time and planted a seed in our collective future. We sowed that seed – with love and with hate, with unity and with division, with progress and with regression. Had we nurtured it only with love, we very well may have seen results sooner, but as it has been said by people wiser than me – “to everything there is a season”.

And now the spring has come to the winter of our discontent. A new shoot of hope has broken through the surface of that rocky soil that is our America and stretched it’s leaves to the sky for that first drink of sunlight. Today, 45 years from the proclamation of a dream, we as a people will formally nominate the first African-American EVER for President, Senator Barack Obama. I can not tell you what this means to us as a people, but I can try and tell you what it means to me: it means that we ARE marching forward to freedom, that we ARE seeing ourselves in each other, that, YES WE CAN make it to ‘The Promised Land’ that Dr. King saw. North, South, East and West, from mountain to desert, from sea to shining sea, are saying in one voice “This is our time, This is our moment – we can heal this nation – We can heal this world”.

No to anger and aggression, Yes to peace and compassion
No to fear and division – Yes to courage and brotherhood.


“I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every
hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain,
and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord
shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a
stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling
discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this
faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle
together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing
that we will be free one day.

This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will
be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of
liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father's died, land of the Pilgrim's
pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so
let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let
freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring
from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.


Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let
freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.


But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.


Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.


Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi - from
every mountainside.


Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow
freedom ring - when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when
all of God's children - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics - will be able to join hands and sing in the words
of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty,
we are free at last!"